The concept of governance has come to be used more commonly in the discussion of public administration, but the meaning of the term is not always clear. There is a growing body of European literature that can be characterized as "governance without government," stressing as it does the importance of networks, partnerships, and markets (especially international markets). This body of literature can be related to the new public management; yet it has a number of distinctive elements. This article discusses the strengths and weaknesses of this literature and its applicability to public administration in the United States.The traditional conceptualization of the public sector has come under increasing strain during the past several decades. The idea that national governments are the major actors in public policy and that they are able to influence the economy and society through their actions now appears to be in doubt. Some of the strain on national governments has been the result of the increased importance of the international environment and of an arguably diminished capacity of those governments to insulate their economies and societies from the global pressures. Those pressures on national governments come about through international capital markets (Strange 19%; but see Hirst and Thompson 1996; Peters 1998) as well as through supranational organizations such as the European Union (Scharpf 1997).Another strain on the traditional conception of governing arises from changes in the relationship between government and the private sector. At the extreme it is argued that "governance without government" is becoming the dominant pattern of management for advanced industrial democracies (Rhodes 1997).

We argue that contemporary research on the influence of organisational autonomy on performance in public organisations uses a diverse and a too restrictive conceptualisation of autonomy. After discussing that research, the article develops six dimensions of the concept of autonomy in public organisations. Second, weaknesses of contemporary research are shown by confronting their conceptualisations with the developed taxonomy. Third, data from a survey of Flemish public organisations illuminate the need to acknowledge the six different dimensions of autonomy when studying the effect of autonomy on performance. The empirical material points at the dangers of using formal–legal status of a public organisation as an indicator of its autonomy, given substantial heterogeneity of organisations with the same formal–legal status on each dimension of autonomy. Moreover, tensions between different levels of autonomy appear in practice, indicating the need for a combined and integrated study of the effects of the different dimensions of autonomy on performance. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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The conventional critique of institutional theory, and especially historical institutionalism, is that it is incapable of coping with change. We argue for the importance of political conflict as a means of initiating change in an institutionalist framework. In particular, conflict over ideas and the underlying assumptions of policy is important for motivating change. We demonstrate the viability of this argument with examples of institutional change.Before Socrates there were two dominant philosophers whose writings attempted to explain the natural world. On the one hand Parmenides stressed permanence and the persistence of elements of the world. On the other hand, Heraclitus argued that "all is flux" and that the world is constantly changing. In many ways the study of public policy has progressed little since that time. One body of literature in policy studies emphasizes the persistence of policy and its "path dependency," while another equally important, if smaller, body of literature stresses the need to understand policy change. Both of these literatures are necessary for understanding policy, as there are definite elements of stability and change in most policy areas.The dominant strand of thinking in political science has assumed equilibrium, stability, and some ease in reaching consensus. This emphasis on equilibrium is true of approaches as disparate as much of rational choice analysis, systems theories, and a good deal of the international relations literature. Our concern in this paper is the way in which the persistence of institutions masks underlying dissensus over policy and programs. In theoretical terms the central analytic notion of "path dependency" in historical institutionalism may mask the dissensus that may exist beneath the surface of a program, or organizational field, and thus produce some neglect of the forces for change. Given that theory at once helps